


hold on to me

by sunflakes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, I wrote this in an hour, M/M, lmfaoooo this is trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 11:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7714063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflakes/pseuds/sunflakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I love you,” Keith says over his shoulder, sliding the door shut behind him. Just before it connects with the frame, a flash of a smile is visible on Keith’s face, more content than he’s ever been. He’s been that way a lot lately - more smiles, more laughter, more casual touches with everyone on the team. Keith is positively blooming, and it’s because of Lance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold on to me

“I love you,” Keith says over his shoulder, sliding the door shut behind him. Just before it connects with the frame, a flash of a smile is visible on Keith’s face, more content than he’s ever been. He’s been that way a lot lately - more smiles, more laughter, more casual touches with everyone on the team. Keith is positively blooming, and it’s because of Lance.

Lance, who can’t bear it.

He can’t bear how happy Keith is, how soft he gets now. He can’t bear how his happiness spreads to the rest of the team, the knowing amusement in Shiro’s eyes, the satisfied teasing Pidge directs towards them. He can’t bear how much better Voltron functions now. He can’t bear that no matter what, all he feels when they touch is a sort of hollowness.  
It’s not that he doesn’t want to see Keith happy - no, it’s quite the opposite. It fills him with an outpouring of fondness and warmth, that Keith has been able to step out of his prickly coat and form real, human bonds. It’s just that lately that happiness has been tinged with a quiet, bittersweet ache. Because as much as he had once loved Keith, things change. They always do.

If you had told Lance a year ago that Keith Kogane, best pilot in their class and Lance’s self-proclaimed rival, would be laughing at Lance’s jokes or holding his hand under the table, he would have scoffed at you and turned quickly away so his blush wasn’t visible. Imagine that, he would have thought - making Keith smile. And now he no longer had to imagine, because Keith was his. Forever, he said one late night, over their clasped hands. For as long as space goes on, Lance replied in a whisper, falling in love with the shine in Keith’s eyes all over again. And he believed it with everything he had.  
But the spark in Lance’s heart started to fade. He tried to deny it at first - It’s natural in a relationship, he told himself, the ebb and flow of affection. It’ll be fine. He still holds Keith’s hand under the table, kisses him while he was talking, makes inappropriate statements during training that earned him glares from the rest of the team. He convinces himself the small flame in his heart is strong as ever. But the fire shrinks more and more, until one day he wakes up and realizes that he’s trying to create a fire with a pile of ash, and all it’s left him with is the feeling of knowing that you will never love someone as much as you once did.

Lance still loves Keith, in a way. It’s the bittersweet kind of love, an ache in your chest from loving a person but knowing you have to leave them. It’s the kind of love left over from infatuation with an idea, not a person. And Lance knows that was his mistake - he fell in love with the idea of Keith, not Keith as a person. It’s love tinged with pity and guilt because how could he do this? He thought for so long he was in love, terrible, heartbreaking love that kept him up at night. But now it’s the absence of love that has him lying awake. 

Hold on to me, he begs silently as Keith sits next to him, please let me keep loving you. I can’t do this alone. But Keith was never good at interpreting silence, and Lance’s pleas echo into the space he always feels now. The space when Keith holds him, so tightly that it feels like Lance is his entire world, while Lance stares blankly ahead. The space between their fingers when they interlock their hands, the space between their bodies as Keith sleeps and Lance stares at the ceiling. There’s emptiness in every word they say to each other, and Lance doesn’t know what to do.

Keith hasn’t noticed the space, not yet. Lance is good at pretending. He’s good at pretending his heart beats faster when Keith brushes his hand, that their hands feel right laced together, that the pit in his stomach isn’t killing him. Keith doesn’t know. And he doesn’t need to, Lance decides, because there are seven of them on this ship and the universe depends on them working together. 

He makes his choice that night, with Keith’s head pillowed on his chest. You hold on to me, he murmurs, and I’ll hold on to you. I’ll hold on to you, he whispers again, even as he slips out of bed and pulls on his clothes.  
He reaches the door and hesitates before turning back and carefully placing his jacket over Keith’s sleeping form.  
“Hold on to me,” he whispers, his voice wavering, as he walks away.

**Author's Note:**

> choice notes from my doc:  
> "this is the most melodramatic fkn ending though bc where the fucks he gonna go??? hurl himself out the airlock and screw over voltron and the universe? no hes just gonna go mope on the ship somehwere and then keiths gonna find him or maybe shiro and theyll have a heart to heart and then theyll still all be together and itll probably go to shit this is the worst thing ever"


End file.
